Recycled, solar-powered, boat-roofed wonder wins Shed of the Year

The crowning glory is a 14-ft boat which has been left whole and inverted to form the roof. A 20-W solar panel powers the creature comforts inside.To create the shed's frame, the boat was fixed atop four telegraph poles plonked judiciously on a hillside amid Wales' Cambrian Mountains. (The views aren't at all bad, either). Aluminum-framed windows were salvaged from a 1940s caravan, and others were "borrowed" from Holland's farmhouse. Walls are a mixture of corrugated metal and, for a taste of the Neolithic, wattle and daub.

Inside things take a turn for the high tech. The shed's PV panel feeds a battery which provides power to LED lighting and a 12-V sound system – the only new item in the construction. The shed also boasts a plumbed Belfast sink (the generous, cuboid-shaped ones), and a 19th century wood burning stove for heat fitted with a chimney fashioned from the queen pole of an old circus big top.Where sheds end and (sometimes pretentious) "micro-dwellings" begin is anyone's guess, but it's refreshing to come across a modestly-sized building designed for purposes other than commenting on the inherent tension between built and natural environments or seeking to blur the boundary between the indoors and the outdoors. Holland's motive? "We have discovered that the shed is an ideal space for middle aged women to get drunk and dance wildly under the stars and we intend to pursue this policy!" he writes, at Readersheds.co.uk. "It is also an ideal place for me to sit whilst our 3 dogs run around our field exercising themselves."

Holland intends to spend the £1,000 winnings (more than twice the cost of building the shed) on a wind turbine "to give me enough electricity to make ice in the fridge for gin and tonics, and to ensure the cider and beers are always chilled."

Comments

Google to build green-roof California HQ

An image has been released of what looks set to become Google's new California HQ. Named Bay View, the nine-building campus is designed to maximize the likelihood of innovation-friendly chance encounters between the workforce. "You can't schedule innovation," Google's David Radcliffe tells Vanity Fair . "We want to create opportunities for people to have ideas and be able to turn to others right there and say, 'What do you think of this?'" This philosophy has fostered the design's angular office blocks, arranged back to back like nodding clergy. Despite the 1.1 million sq ft (102,000 sq m), employees will be a maximum of a 2.5-minute walk away from one another, Vanity Fair reports. Perhaps most remarkable is that this is Google's first build. In its 15-year history, Google has only ever occupied buildings previously used by others. "We've been the world's best hermit crabs: we've found other people's shell

Nerf Vulcan Sentry Gun tracks targets and avoids friendly fire

Anyone who plays video games will know that few things protect an area like a well-placed sentry gun. In the real world, though, even a person's bedroom or office could use a little protection sometimes, which is why one designer has built the Nerf Vulcan Sentry Gun. Using a custom program and some servos, the sentry can automatically locate targets and unleash a stream of foam darts at over seven times the usual speed, while keeping its owner out of the crosshairs. Britt Liv Ulrike Michelsen, a chemical and biological engineering student from Germany, designed and constructed the sentry using mostly basic electronics and some plywood. This isn't the first time she's modified a Nerf gun, but building this robotic turret is arguably her most ambitious project to date. Luckily, the Nerf Vulcan already operates using an electric motor, so controlling the actual firing mechanism through a computer was just a matter of connecting it directly to an Arduino Uno and a laptop.

Wired wood: Gizmag's top ten wooden gadgets

We may be surrounded by gadgetry clad in shiny aluminum and gaudy plastic, but there's still a place left in the digital age for the comfort, simplicity and beauty of wood. Perhaps its the trend towards a "green" aesthetic or some deeper drive to get back to nature, but we've noticed a growing number of consumer electronics offerings in recent times that mesh circuit boards and synthetics with the wonders of wood. With this in mind, we've scoured our resources to come up with this list of Gizmag's top ten wooden gadgets. OOOMS Wooden USB Stick OOOMS, a design company based in The Netherlands, has created a USB stick that is made of … a stick. The creators literally pick up sticks, based on quality and appearance, and professionally work them into unique USB sticks that can hold from 2 to 16 Gb. Wooden Records Amanda Ghassaei has developed a laser cutting system that can carve music into a wooden record . After pulling audio from a WAV file with P

ANBARASUASOKAN

Search This Blog